This summer saw the completion of a major project that aimed to improve the IT experience of students by moving them from legacy Novell technologies to modern Microsoft replacements. A great deal of planning went into this move so as to reduce the risk of disruption to students during their important summer dissertation time. Happily things went well and there was virtually no disruption caused to students.

This project is expected to deliver the following benefits:

• Improved system reliability / reduction in compatibility issues
• Improved access from non-standard systems (personal laptops, iPads etc) particularly in the areas of file access and printing
• Reduced risk of software support becoming unavailable in the future
• Reduced support load due to compatibility issues
• Removal of the financial risk of WBS having to cover Novell software liences and support agreements
• Increased number of print devices plus a doubling of devices that are equipped with print release terminals. These allow for 'follow me' printing where students can print to a shared queue and then 'beep' their card on a range of different devices to release their job for printing.

The experience and knowledge gained from this project will be used to inform decisions about similar changes for staff over the coming year.